I have a feeling it won't accept hotmail, gmail type online email addresses, only proper POP email addresses provided by your ISP. I think it came up a couple of years ago when others had problems registering. The problem is that the online ones tend to be used by scammers as there's no security checking.

Yes I too had a feeling that certain email address domains (way to put it?) had problems in the past - question on email providers (above) meant to imply question as to which email providers.

Not many people these days use email addresses provided by ISP's, so what you're saying could be unfortunate. Dai recently suggested (another thread) that forum use may be declining due to LPG sites on Facebook etc - But if only a fraction of new people manage to register on this forum I reckon that would be the biggest reason.

I increasingly get calls/txts from people saying they can't register, I help them but it's sometimes like a running forum thread via phone txt messages! In the past I thought it was just people who couldn't be bothered to register or who would just rather ask advice directly but recent numbers make it obvious there's a forum problem.

I know what you mean but I still don't understand why people don't use proper email addresses. I've got a gmail address as I had to register one when I wanted to post something on Youtube but I have never used it for email. Why would you trust all your emails, some of which may be important, personal or confidential, to a remote server operated by a commercial company which you have no control over? With using a POP server account, as every ISP provides you with, the emails can be downloaded to your own computer (using Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail or whatever email client you choose) so you have control over them. Backup your computer regularly and no matter what happens in the outside world, you've not lost anything.

I know what you mean but I still don't understand why people don't use proper email addresses. I've got a gmail address as I had to register one when I wanted to post something on Youtube but I have never used it for email. Why would you trust all your emails, some of which may be important, personal or confidential, to a remote server operated by a commercial company which you have no control over? With using a POP server account, as every ISP provides you with, the emails can be downloaded to your own computer (using Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail or whatever email client you choose) so you have control over them. Backup your computer regularly and no matter what happens in the outside world, you've not lost anything.

Actually not as many of the isps now available provide pop email - though its something you can get elsewhere for a few pounds a month, a fair number of the cheaper providers cut stuff as you might expect, and pop email is one of them.

I'm registered on a live.co.uk address (hotmail) and have been for years both when i was using BT (who provide email, but i found to be highly unreliable) and now Vodafone (who don't provide email, but works out about half the cost of what i was paying BT)

Keeping a copy of your email is certainly a good idea if you do deal with anything important, though the ideal way is to have an account for just the important stuff, with a separate one to catch your junk mail caused from any company that you've given your email address to in the past.

Gilbert I'll reply to the other message tomorrow mate, just got in from work when I read it. Spagbol, baby to play with, a couple of cans and film to watch mean I'll be better placed to reply to tech questions tomorrow.

I think I went the Yahoo email route because I could keep the same email even if I changed ISP's and I trust Yahoo security far more than security of my laptop, which has potential to be nicked etc. I have been tempted by the 'Setup Outlook now' prompts when installing Windows over the years, partly because Outlook evolved to become much more than just an email facility and Microsoft hyped it as almost essential but I think I came to the conclusion pretty early on in internet days and don't regret that - I would have had to change email addresses many times if I had gone the ISP email route, cheapmotoring@AOLdialup in the late 90's would be a distant memory now. I could setup email via my website domain name, but then I think either way people have to remember either domain (cheapmotoring@yahoo / @hotmail / @etc) or the first bit (mail/simon/enquiries @lpgc.co.uk). I reckon cheapmotoring@yahoo easier than... was that mail/simon/enquiries @lpgc And, should I ever change website domains, well you can see the implications. I do have a few other LPG related domain names 'on hold' and I'm starting to think I made a bad choice with Lpgc, which seems a bit nondescript. Wish I'd named Yorkshire Autogas or SimonAndrewAutogas but at the time YorkshireAutogas was a firm in Hull, and I probably have a better reputation now than I could have hoped for, so with hindsight SimonAndrewAutogas might have faired me better, the nondescript name probably hasn't helped me much. On the other hand I think an @lpgc email address would seem more professional to some people, but again offsetting that I reckoned it'd be easier in the event of some kinds of tech issues to pickup emails from Yahoo than from my website host, maybe especially while on holiday etc.

I write on a laptop that's one year old, massive with a very decent spec, but the other day it got a few drips of rain while I was connecting it to a customer's LPG system and now there are a couple of patches of screen that seem distorted by likely water between screen front and active part, water could just as easily have got onto the motherboard.. A customer since does repairs for Dell and offerered me a £4k Dell toughbook for £1k but of course I declined! Even if I could leave a toughbook out in the rain or drive a car over it, even though toughbooks have serial ports, I'd rather take my chances of maybe needing to buy several new laptops over the length of time one of those might last me and if I need a laptop with serial port I'll buy an old one.

It is down to spam I'm afraid. In the beginning this forum allowed pretty much any domain and it started getting swamped with spam. We get hundreds of registrations and the mods have to vet each one and make a judgement call whether they are legit or not. The domains that are most likely to be used by spammers are blocked from registering on the forum.

On the forum I'm a mod on, initially it wasn't a problem then we started getting spam posts appearing with either links to downloaded films or lectures about alcohol induced gout (!). Most of the spammers aren't people but automated so the simple answer was to enable a Captcha for registrations. No idea if that can be done with the phpBB software, ours runs FlaskBB.

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